A small pod was drifting through space in no special direction. The pod was human-sized and looked like an escape pod, however, something was off about it the pod. The human inside it was in cryosleep and looked peaceful, but alive. In the distance, there was a ship coming towards the pod. As the ship came closer to the pod, it directed a beam of light at it.

The ship was massive. So massive in fact that it was actually carrying a planet beneath it. It was almost as big as the planet it was carrying beneath it. The planet was beautiful, it was surrounded by some kind of shield, with iridescent rainbow colors, protecting it from space, it was blue like Earth, but at the same time, something about it looked magical. 

If the human in the pod was awake, he would forget how to breathe and would be speechless from the sheer beauty of the whole scene unfolding before his eyes. Compared to the ship and the planet, the human pod looked like a piece of sand in a sand storm. The beam of light pulled the pod into one of the openings on the massive ship and as soon as it put it on the ground inside the ship, it disappeared.

The pod didn’t open right away, there was a control panel on the pod that had to be activated to open the pod. This was a problem because the robots on the alien ship didn’t understand the language on the pod console. The robots were intelligent so they tried to open the pod in a different way. They removed the top of the console and connected directly to the pod itself. They still had a problem opening the pod because the programing language was so old and rigid that it took them a couple of tries to get the pod open.

When the pod finally opened, the human inside sat up, saw a bunch of robots around him, leaned over the edge of the pod and vomited, violently. The robots looked at each other and stood there until the human was done vomiting.

“Sorry about that guys. I don’t like cryosleep. It always makes me nauseous, this time it really did its job on me.“ The human said.

The robots helped the human out of the pod and put shackles around his feet and arms.

“What are you doing? I’m not a criminal. You could have just asked me to come with you.” The human said and one of the robots pressed a button on the hand shackles. He started levitating and two robots grabbed his arms and pushed him forward while the other followed. “Uuuuu… Levitating shackles. I like that. Thank you science for not making me walk when I’m falsely imprisoned.” The human said with sarcasm in his voice.

As the robots were taking him somewhere, he looked around the ship. The ship walls were white and the shapes clean, oval and smooth. ‘At least it’s not all black and covered in skulls. Maybe these guys are good.’ Ha thought as the robots pushed him through one of the oval doors. The room was divided into two sections and he had no idea what the sections were for. One of the robots pushed another button on his shackles and he stopped levitating. They took of his shackles and one of the robots gave him a box. 

“What?” The human asked.

The robot pushed the box into his hands.

“What do I do with this?” The human asked and the robot mimicked taking off his clothes. “Ooooooo… You want me to take off my clothes. Why? Can’t you disinfect me like this?” The human asked but got no answer, just more robot mimicking taking off its clothes. He felt like he was in a cheap striptease bar, but he listened to the robot, took off his clothes and put them in the basket.

The robot took the basket and put it on the table in the right section of the room. ‘Why do they sterilize the clothes separately?’ The human thought because it made no sense. It was a waste of energy. On Earth ships, all personnel went through decontamination with their clothes on. It was faster and more efficient. A robot grabbed his hand and put him in the left section on the room inside a red circle. The other robot did the same thing with the box of clothes.

All of the robots stood back, except one. The one that remained first pushed the yellow button and in both sections, a glass wall came down. A small red light was glowing over the red button and when it stopped, the robot pushed the red button. A cold flow of air rushed through the left section leaving the human whining and twisting from the cold. “I see that nothing’s changed. Prisoners still get cold showers.” The robot waited for the light over the red button to turn off again and pushed it again.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

In the left section, a beam went over him. In the left section, a machine came down the ceiling, aimed straight at the box, fired a laser beam and incinerated the box and its contents. “You bastards! My Pokemon trainer badges were on my jacket. I had five of them. Five! I needed just one more to be a Pokemon master! You barbarians!” The human yelled and let out a quiet whine as the robots took him out of the left section ad gave him new clothes. While he was putting the new clothes, he looked over to the pile of dust on the floor of the right section and a tear run down the right side of his face.

The robots put shackles on his arms and legs again and levitated him towards another room. This time, they were walking for a long time, but the ship looked the same everywhere they went. Everything was white, oval-shaped with clean lines. They passed some of the bigger rooms and came to an elevator. One of the robots pushed a button with a strange symbol on it and in just a few seconds, the elevator stopped. This part of the ship looked a little different.

Here there were small rooms with small long doors on the floor and robots standing guard at each door. ‘So this is the prison.’ The human thought. The robots opened one of the rooms and levitated him in. They removed his shackles and closed the door, locking it.

“Is there a biological being I could talk to so we can sort this mess out?!” The human yelled after the robots but got no answers. ‘Why is nobody telling me what’s happening? Am I a criminal? Were the pod and the cryosleep me serving my sentence? But my uniform wasn’t a prisoner uniform. Wait… What’s my name?’ He thought but couldn’t remember. ‘How can’t I remember my own name? I remembered the Pokemon badges.’

He heard about this before. People that were exposed to prolonged cryosleep could experience temporary amnesia. They could remember some parts about their lives, but completely forget things like who are they or what happened to them before cryosleep. This was well known because when cryosleep became popular the prisons implemented it as a way to make prisoners serve their punishment. That way the prisoners were in cryosleep, didn’t have to eat or drink and didn’t kill each other. However, as it turned out prolonged cryosleep had bad side effects on the human brain and the prisons stopped the practice fearing lawsuits. 

He was sitting on a flat surface, which was probably the bed, trying to remember his name and what happened to him before cryosleep, but his mind was a complete blank. He decided to look around the room, who knows, maybe something will jog his memory. The room was small, it had a flat surface attached to the right wall, a table, a chair and a door on the left wall. He came closer to the door and they slid open revealing a bathroom. The only unusual thing about the room was that the ceiling was high.

Nothing in the room jogged his memory, but he still had to have a name. On Earth, every time they couldn’t identify someone, they called him John Doe, so he thought why not use that as his name. Instead of concentrating on things John couldn’t remember, he turned his attention to the things he could remember. 

He could remember that his clothes were a uniform and that that meant he was probably working on a ship. The uniform seemed filthy and old and that could only mean that he was working on the ship for a long time, as for the filth it could mean that he was an engineer or that it got filthy before he got into the pod.

Suddenly, the small long door opened and a metal tray was pushed inside. There were two bowls, a bigger and a smaller one, and a glass of water on the tray. The bigger bowl had a reddish gelatin-like liquid inside it and the smaller wan a portion of grass. John was still feeling ill from the cryosleep but he decided to at least try to eat something. He scooped out some of the reddish gelatin-like liquid and put it in his mouth. He almost vomited again. It tasted so bad that his entire digestive system cramped. It felt like he just put a watermelon, coconut, grapefruit, walnut, chestnut, almond, a rubber tire and someone else’s vomit. He tried to get rid of the awful taste out of his mouth with the grass but the sharp leaves cut his tongue. With nothing to get the taste out he hurried to the toilet and vomited. 

When he felt strong, enough to stand up he returned to the metal tray, drank the water and pushed the tray to the long small door on the floor. ‘What kind of beings could stomach food such as this? I thought I would die just from one bite. Maybe these guys aren’t as good as I thought.’ John thought, sitting on his bed, rubbing his stomach and burping silently. After a few moments, the lights in his room turned off. ‘So it’s night time. I could use some sleep after a day like this.’ John thought, lay down on the bed and fell asleep almost immediately.